Your Source for Urban Living

In the last decade, we’ve seen the planet warm 0.13°C, 73 hectares of forest give way to farmland, and sea levels rise 36.7 mm. In the next 10 years, these trends are expected to continue as world population grows by 900 million people. By 2050, 70 percent of the world’s population is expected to live … [Read more…]

Even though this video came out over a year ago, I just stumbled upon it now. It distills why dense cities are more sustainable than sprawling suburbs. Obviously, it glosses over some complexity, but the video is only two and a half minutes long. I’ve been interested in the format of these explainer videos for … [Read more…]

My colleague Bill Slawski (of SEO by the Sea fame) writes: Your first line of this post had me thinking about walkability scores for homes and apartments, and I started wondering what you thought about those. They rank a number of cities on the basis of walkability here: https://www.walkscore.com/cities-and-neighborhoods/ How well can that shell around an urban … [Read more…]

While there are plenty of economic and cultural arguments for dense, walkable neighborhoods connected by public transit, there’s also the aesthetic argument: Suburban streets are boring, cookie cutter shells of a community. This argument was among the first against suburban development. Before New Urbanists had fully articulated the myriad reasons dense cities are preferable to … [Read more…]

A little personal news: I just got back from the Washington Ideas Forum, where I was invited to a dinner with some leading thinkers on smart cities. Much of the conversation went above my head, but I ended up leaving with a few takeaways.

As technology and broadband speeds improve, more and more people will be working from home. Up to half of jobs are compatible with telecommuting, so we could soon see a shift from workers clogging up highways to clogging up the line at Starbucks.

Whenever people talk about smart cities, they invariably speak about implementing technology from the top down. It’s all about asking the question, “How can governments provide better services?” Usually, the answer involves a connected network of sensors that help reduce waste. But there’s another way of looking at smart cities. In most developed countries, people carry … [Read more…]

I have to say, at the beginning, I was skeptical of the Internet of Things. Yes, I concede many smart devices are useful—even indispensable! Smartphones, tablets, smart TVs, even smart lights, speakers, and routers make sense to me. But I draw the line at smart forks, smart plates, and smart fridges. These tools won’t catch … [Read more…]